Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday May 31, 2010 @12:37PM
from the aiming-for-a-piece-of-the-apple-pie dept.

WrongSizeGlass writes "Reuters is reporting that netbook pioneer Asustek Computer Inc. has become the latest technology company to jump on the tablet PC bandwagon. The device will be called the Eee Pad, will run on Intel or ARM chips, and use Microsoft's Windows operating system. 'The Eee Pad can display Adobe Flash for the full web experience, has a USB port and a camera,' Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said. Asus did not release pricing details or a potential release date, and did not provide further details on the format or a launch date for the new app store."

I'm not a fanboy, but that's not exactly true. Yes, most of their devices do have a lot of stock components, however apple does do a lot of custom ASIC's in their products and supposed the new CPU is an apple modified version of teh ARM Cortex... so they do do their own hardware as well.

Motion Computing's tablets are pretty much the definition of awesome - if you can afford them. At $2000-$4000, they're a bit out of my price range for a non-primary computer, but you can always pick up some used ones off ebay. Once you replace the old battery, they're great. They're built to last, so used ones are almost as good as new. Try pulling this [youtube.com] off with an iPad!

My hat goes off to you, you are a true slashdotter who takes the phrase "never let the facts get in the way of a good argument" to heart.

T91 multitouch demonstrated almost a year ago - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdcpo3-XxI0 [youtube.com]
It has 32GB SSD not 16GB, and an Atom Z520, at 1.3GHz which is perfectly fine for webbrowsing, web video etc.
What, do you want a core i7 or something in a tablet ?

In fact, from what I've heard from a buddy who used to work at apple, it's not uncommon for them to do custom designs (by which I mean minor adjustments, not wholescale redesigns) for their chips. They don't manufacture them, certainly, but they're not just shipping devices with bog-standard chips they got from sparkfun.

They were "persuaded" to go with Windows instead of Android. source [electronista.com]. Make of that what you will.

Taiwan companies making tablets are being "persuaded" by Intel and Microsoft to promote x86-based tablets over ARM models, according to a controversial claim today. Both ASUS and MSI had made it clear they were producing Tegra-based ARM tablets with Android at the start of the year but have suddenly shifted much of their attention for the Computex show in early June to systems using Intel's chips, usually Atom processors, with Windows 7 as the OS. ARM-based tablets would still be at the expo and ship in the summer but would be secondary focuses at most.

Because there may be applications that are available there that are not available elsewhere (and no sufficiently good analogs exist)?

Then the consumer would probably be buying a device that already has said applications, not buying a device in the hopes some MIGHT be made. And software makers will be hesitant to make such software given that Windows tablets now have a strong decade long track record of utter failure, in the face of instance success from Apple. If Windows tablets were some new fresh thing I could see a number of companies taking a gamble on it but as things stand, most companies simply cannot program against those kinds of odds of success (without substantial subsidy from Microsoft, which we may yet see).

Again, depends on whether there is a touch-enabled analog in the first place. If there isn't, I'd rather have a mouse-driven app, which is clumsy but usable with touch, than no app at all.

Not me. I've tried that before, I'd rather just use a laptop to run applications that cannot be bothered to take touch entry seriously. If it's too frustrating to use, there really is no point in having the ability to do so. Bad software is bad software, and does not get used.

Why wouldn't it, if all it takes to reach a new audience (even if small) is a simple recompile?

See the point about badly running software above for what happens when you take a desktop windows app and change the target processor dropdown to ARM and call it a day.

Not to mention, you ignore the ENTIRE chain of development and delivery that takes place in real software. You know, testing, packaging, distribution, support, upgrades, etc. etc. etc?

The only time a "simple recompile" is an acceptable answer is when it's the end user doing the recompiling, and even then it's usually a bit beyond a "simple recompile" even on seemingly similar UNIX systems... it will not fly for commercial software

And all of these are being built in the same factories overseas, contracted out from a few people. The actual LCD in your HDTV is made by either LG, Sony, or Samsung, no matter what the branding on the outside is. These are mixed with different technologies under the hood, circuit boards, etc, and sold by different brands. Sometimes a TV will come off the line and be slapped with stickers from multiple brands, or will be custom built to a particular brand's specifications.

Apple is no different. They contract out manufacturing to different factories overseas, with parts from some and other parts from others. They always invest a lot of time and effort into unique software interfaces. Sometimes, as with Firewire, they help develop and push hardware standards. They also create custom casings, motherboards, and hardware configurations. In the case of the iPad they helped develop the custom processor underlying the entire thing.

Apple participates in the realities of world manufacturing, just like everyone else. They can actually do this a lot more since they abandoned the rarer PowerPC platform and moved to X86, which specifically saved on the custom manufacturing. That's how it is done. To deride them for manufacturing this way would be like singling them out for making products with plastic, or shipping hardware in large cardboard boxes.